Where we live matters more than we may think, says the man who made the “creative class” part of the lexicon. In his new book, Who's Your City?, Richard Florida examines how “mega-regions” are driving the global economy and how each one is informed by its own distinct personality. Where we choose to live, argues the director of the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute , is crucial not only to how we live and who we share our lives with, but also to what kind of career we end up having.
In this passage, he describes how this “geographic clustering” is dictated by five basic personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
We know that values, beliefs, and attitudes cluster geographically and are sustained over time through social interaction – that's what defines culture. According to Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas, and Jason Rentfrow, a psychologist at Cambridge University, these places (and their inhabitants) will also assume certain personality traits.
They refer to these as “social founder effects.” That is, people come to acquire personality traits that reflect their practices, lifestyles, and beliefs. Places that tolerate or encourage openness to experience will ultimately attract people who seek environments in which they can feel free to express themselves.
Even people who are not initially open-minded may, to some extent, internalize some of those values and preferences over time. Eventually, large segments of the population may end up embodying these traits.
Another factor is what Rentfrow and Gosling call “selective migration.” Geographic differences in personality, they write, “could have emerged as a result of immigrants selectively migrating to places that satisfied and reinforced their psychological and physical needs.” According to the theory, these initial groups establish personality traits that are then passed down to subsequent generations – a notion, Rentfrow and Gosling point out, that is supported by ample evidence.
Because of the “genetic founder effects,” they argue, the migration of like-minded people to certain areas may reduce the amount of variation in the gene pool over time, thereby increasing the proportion of people who possess particular traits.
These effects are reinforced by social pressure and social influence. Clearly, certain kinds of personalities are more attracted to certain kinds of places. We seek out places to live that reinforce and reflect aspects of who we are and who we want to become.
Seeing the strong clustering of personality types and learning more about the relationship between psychology and place was causing a subtle but profound shift in my own thinking. All my professional life, I've looked at how social and economic factors shape the world. I'd never really been into psychology – never thought about how personal proclivities might affect innovation or economic development. But all of a sudden it was dawning on me that psychology plays a central role.
For years I had sought to develop better and more refined measures of what economists refer to as human capital or skill. My own measures of the creative class, and of creative occupations, which we discussed earlier, were my attempts to add the kinds of work people do to economists' emphasis on human capital or level of education.
Traits vs. skills
But what if skill is more than education and more than work? Rentfrow suggests that personality involves the capacity to acquire and perform certain tasks competently and effectively. The type of skill economists are interested in, he writes, “implies something that can be acquired with proper training, talent, motivation, and resources.” But, he adds, “it's more consistent with personality theory to argue that personality traits predispose people to acquire certain skills. For example, highly conscientious people have a disposition to be detail oriented, plan ahead, or stay organized. Openness influences people's ability to acquire new skills relatively quickly.”
